"Where Is the Cavalry?"

When I was growing up I watched John Wayne movies all the time. I liked the way he always won the day. No matter what the odds he always came out on top. In other westerns where the hero was not as successful as John Wayne the United States Cavalry always rode to the rescue. The pioneers would be surrounded and about to be wiped out; then you would hear the bugle playing and the Cavalry would ride in just in the nick of time.

That was then and this is now. The two most honored movies of last year were "No Country For Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood." In both the bad guys apparently win. Javier Bardem's character Anton Chigurh is one of the most monstrous and despicable human beings ever depicted on screen. He kills without thought and without remorse. When he is killing there is no Cavalry riding to the rescue.

In "There Will Be Blood" Daniel Day-Lewis brilliantly portrays Daniel Plainview, a man who does anything to succeed in business. At the end of the film he even commits cold-blooded murder. While this is going on there is no Cavalry riding in to save the day.

Is this what Hollywood thinks we want? Or have they arbitrarily decided on no more heroes or happy endings? Neither "No Country" or "Blood" broke any records at the box office. Even Oscar wins for Day-Lewis and Bardem couldn't entice people to pay to see such depressing films.

I turned to reading a good book to escape this negativism. I picked up John Grisham's latest THE APPEAL. Grisham has gotten a little off the beaten path lately with his short books about romance and baseball, or his true crime story, but this new book was supposed to be a return to the glory days of A TIME TO KILL or THE RAINMAKER.

The new book concerns an effort by big money to buy a Supreme Court judge in Mississippi. The owner of a huge corporation that has polluted land and water in Mississippi causing cancer and other diseases in a community now wants to avoid the fines levied against him. I got into the story looking forward to the pages where the bad guy would get what was coming to him. Never happened. Even the great John Grisham let me down.

It seems the country is entering into a period where we just think the worst is going to happen. Gasoline prices are just going to continue to go up, the war in Iraq is never going to end, jobs are going to become more and more scarce, and the American dream is going to become a nightmare. We see it and we expect more of the same.

Not me. I am not going to give into this malaise. Negative thought begets negative happenings. I am going to go with the positive. I am going to believe in a brighter future. I am going to believe in the American Dream. I am going to listen for the sound of that bugle and wait for the Cavalry to ride in and save the day.
 

 

 

 

 

©2008 Jackie K. Cooper

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